The killing and jailing of people on accusations of insulting Islam is shameful. Pakistan’s supreme court should spare the life of Asia Bibi and curb future convictionsThe supreme court in Lahore will on Thursday hear the appeal of Asia Bibi against her death sentence for blasphemy. It is a case that has already cost two lives: that of Salmaan Taseer,the governor of the Punjab, who spoke out in her defence, and his bodyguard,Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered the governor for defending her and was himself hanged. Qadri was described as a saint and a martyr for his crime by many in Pakistan, or by some prominent mosques in Britain. This is a poisonous mess. Successive generations of Pakistani politicians – most notably Zia ul-Haq – have used the statutes on blasphemy as a way to combine devout fanaticism with the alarm and resentment of outsiders.
Almost all societies have speech codes enforced by law and reinforced by public opinion. The blasphemy law of Pakistan is not just an affront to liberal decencies; the evidence points to it being used as a tool to persecute minorities. It also involves a distortion and coarsening of the sharia principles it claims to embody. atrocious as the Islamic laws against apostasy are – and they are very atrocious indeed – they can by definition only apply to Muslims. The blasphemy law,by contrast, is freely applied against non-Muslims. A zealous interpretation would make Christianity itself punishable by death, and since no honest Christian can pretend that they believe Muslims are honest approximately the nature of Jesus,nor of Muhammad.
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Source: theguardian.com